


Sharp knife of a short life

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Whumptober 2020 [19]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alt: Punctured, Blood, Day 19, Debriding, Infection, Knives, Mention of fatal cesarean section, Mention of loss of mother in childbirth, Surgery, Whumptober 2020, Wound Cleaning, arrow wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Tauriel might have relieved Kili of the orcish arrow's curse, but he still has an infected wound in his leg.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947493
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Sharp knife of a short life

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [aravenwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood) for her extreme kindness in being willing to beta all of these whumptober fills! Especially so since she's also writing her own (amazing!) fics too! Please go check her out and give her some love!!! 
> 
> Please accept my apologies I used a song lyric for the title. Who am I becoming?

Fili watches the boats leave with the rest of the Company, his hands trembling with rage. That Thorin would be willing to leave Kili alone — in a town of men no less! — while he was still recovering from the cursed orcish arrow that pierced his thigh, and Kili not even yet able to walk, is yet another sign of Thorin’s gold madness. 

Fili turns, unwilling to stay and bid them all a proper farewell, and marches back to the bargeman’s house. Kili is there, still laid on a pallet on the floor, while Bain, Tilda, and Sigrid sit near him as he tells stories of wargs and trolls, Bofur embellishing them to the point of laughter with his silly voices and wild gestures. Kili smiles at Fili when he comes in, but there’s a thin sheen of sweat on his brow that is an ill omen when there is still ice upon the lake. 

“How’s your leg, brother?” Fili asks.

Kili smiles. “Sore but much better.”

Fili nods and Bofur catches his eye, a quick frown and a shake of his head that contradicts Kili’s assertion. 

“I’m going to have a look,” Fili decides. Kili starts to protest but Bofur pushes him down with just one hand.

“Bain, Tilda, go down to the docks. Da should have left the fish for us there. We’ll need that for lunch for our guests. No doubt the generosity of the Master has already dried up,” Sigrid says, imparting both hatred for the Master and urgency for the younger children’s mission. Fili can tell it’s merely a ploy to get them out of the house, and he appreciates her shrewdness. 

As soon as the door shuts, Fili and Bofur start unwrapping Kili’s leg and Sigrid begins gathering water and rags. 

“I feel better!” Kili protests. “I’m just a little under the weather and tired is all. Stop that,” he says, swatting at Bofur’s hands.

“No, lad. You’re better from the orcs’ magic, but you’ve still got a hole in your leg, and sure as coal is to burn, you’ve got an infection. I can smell it, not to mention you’ve got a fever to match. We need to clean it,” Bofur insists.

Kili looks at Fili, torn between fear and disbelief, but he doesn’t fight either of them as they unwrap Tauriel’s bindings and look at his leg. The smell is foul, like a carcass in the hot sun, and the wound oozes a yellow-green pus. Fili’s seen this before on other dwarrow when Óin taught them their basics in medicine — they’ll have to cut away the infection and pack the wound until it can be stitched up. Fili knows now that they’ll be laid up in Laketown for weeks but there’s nothing for it. They came close to losing him last night and Fili isn’t about to forsake his brother over some shiny rocks and gold coins. 

“We have a thin, sharp knife Da keeps for things like this. You might want to hone it a bit first, but it cuts true,” Sigrid says as she stands opposite them bearing a bowl of water and a pile of rags.

Fili nods but Bofur, ever the gentleman, nods and smiles. “Oh lass, you’re right smart and more hospitable than the ladies of the finest halls. You’re wasted on this town, you know that?”

Sigrid smiles and blushes at the praise as she scuttles off to dig under a pile of boxes. After a minute, she returns with a leather pouch in hand. “Here you are, master dwarf.”

Fili smiles and thanks her, but he knows that the years he studied princely behavior under Balin’s tutelage can’t match the warm confidence of Bofur who’s lived his life among both men and dwarrow and knows how to charm them all.

“This is of dwarvish make!” Bofur exclaims, handing it over to Fili to examine. 

Fili turns the blade over in his hands, admiring the craftsmanship. “This is a fine knife, Ms. Sigrid. I see you and your father have kept it well.”

She smiles a little thinly and nods. “Da used it to cut Bain out of Ma’s belly when she was birthing him. She started to bleed and it wouldn’t stop. Bain would have died too if it weren’t for Da.”

Fili’s heard stories about women, their hips too narrow or the babies too big or turned the wrong way, how they and the babies die. It’s always been a horror story shared around campfires or between dwarflings, whispered as they pass through the towns of men. A seemingly unreal fate that none of them could truly conceptualize since deaths among birthing dams are almost unheard of. Kili’s eyes are wide in horror and he glances between Sigrid, Fili, and the knife silently. 

“I’m sorry for your loss. I lost my father when I was barely talking. Kili was only just born,” Fili says. 

It’s not what Balin taught him — to be impersonal but caring, to show you’re listening but not reveal too much of yourself in the process. Fili knows that here, now, he isn’t a prince. He’s a homeless dispossessed dwarf in a foreign land with a sick brother and no money. And Sigrid doesn’t need aloof, she’s a child trying to be a woman — she needs compassion. Fili’s not done much of that, but he’s willing to try.

She nods. “It’s hard losing a parent.”

Fili nods. “It is.”

The pause gains tension until Sigrid briskly wipes her hands on her smock. “Well, best to hurry. The longer we wait, the worse it’ll get. We don’t have any salves. It’s too costly. Did your healer leave any?”

Bofur rummages through a bag by Kili’s feet. “Oh, aye. There’s two full jars here. And a right lot of gauze.”

Fili nods. “Kili, this is going to hurt.”

Kili takes a deep breath before nodding shakily. “I know. How long do you think it’ll take?”

Fili shrugs. “No telling how deep this goes. It’ll take until it’s done.”

Bofur pats him comfortingly on the leg. “I’m not gonna tell you not to be scared, lad. But we’ll fix you up right.” 

“I hope this isn’t out of line, but how are the three of us going to hold him down?” Sigrid says. “It took three of your folks last night plus Tilda and me. I’m not half as strong as a dwarf.”

“Aye, but you’re as canny as three,” Bofur says with a wink as he sharpens the knife along his whetstone. “Do you think you could do the cutting, lass? It’s tough work, bloody and smells bad, but it’d leave me and Fili to hold the lad in place.”

Sigrid makes a face that Fili’s seen on Kili many times — youthful determination in the face of something much too heavy for their years. “I’ve cleaned wounds for Da before, and one of his fishermen, Arick. He got his arm caught in the net cable last year and wench hauled him up by it before they cut him free. I cleaned it every day for a month.”

“Did he live?” Kili asks, the fear obvious in his voice.

Sigrid nods. “Yeah, but we ended up just cutting his arm off at the elbow.”

“Oh,” Kili says, sounding a tad defeated.

“Don’t worry, lad. We have Óin’s salve. Once we clean it out and add some salve, you’ll be right as rain,” Bofur promises.

Kili nods looking determined, his fingers bunching in the blanket beneath him. “Alright, before the children get back then.”

Fili grasps Kili’s forearm, “Nadith,” and Kili returns the gesture. “Nadad.”

Sigrid brings her bowls and rags and the newly honed knife and sits beside Kili. Bofur presses Kili’s calf into the floor and Fili releases his brother’s arm to put his weight on his hip.

“I’ll work quickly master dwarf,” Sigrid promises, catching his eye one last time. Fili sees him nod but the moment the tip of the knife digs into the wound Kili’s head drops back to the floor. He breathes out like a horse that’s been run too hard and too long, his lips blowing out with the force of his exhalations. 

Fili can smell the blood and pus that leaks from the wound as she cuts. It takes only a moment before Kili loses his composure and outright screams, writhing under Bofur and Fili’s hands. Sigrid to her credit seems rather nonplussed, cutting bits of decaying flesh from Kili’s leg and depositing them in a bowl. Her hands are already slick with blood and yellow-green fluid and Fili is grateful that she took this job. Not because he minds the blood or infection, but because he doubts that he could have cut bits off of his brother without being sick.

“How deep was the arrow that did this?” Sigrid asks as she opens the wound wider to get deeper.

“Not to the bone but close,” Fili answers. She hums in acknowledgement and Fili is too scared to ask why she needed to know. 

The blanket beneath Kili is soon a deep red that spreads, wicking into the worn smock that Sigrid is partially kneeling on. Fili knows that her knees will soon be stained with his brother’s blood, but there’s naught he can do about it. 

After what feels like ages, Sigrid wipes her hands on a rag and picks up a water skin. “I’m going to rinse the wound to flush out anything I couldn’t get. Turn him up a bit would you?”

Fili and Bofur roll Kili a quarter turn, just enough to elevate the wound so that Sigrid can pour water into the wound rather than simply over it. It’s harder to hold him steady like this but it also matters less since there’s no knife involved. Once the wound is clean and drained, Sigrid uses her fingers to pack Kili’s leg with gauze coated in Óin’s salve. Kili fights this as much as he fought the cutting. Gratefully, Sigrid is honest with her word. She’s fast and efficient, and any misgivings that Fili had about letting a child perform surgery on his brother are allayed. 

“Rest, master dwarf,” she says as she rebinds his leg in clean dressings. “That should help, and I hear dwarves are heartier than men when it comes to sickness. You shouldn’t worry.”

She gathers her things and Bofur helps with the mess of rag and bowls, following her to the kitchen. Fili stays with his brother. 

Kili’s still gasping, trying to catch his breath as tears run down his cheeks. Fili runs his fingers through Kili’s sweat slick hair, nails scraping his scalp like their amad used to do for them when they were dwarflings. 

“I’m here, nadith,” Fili says. He feels stupid, useless, impotent. His brother needs him, but the only thing he can truly do is hold his hand and offer words, something that Fili isn’t even doing very well.

But Kili seems not to care. He nods and grips Fili’s hand, looking at him with such absolute trust that Fili feels almost guilty for what they’ve just done. 

Bofur returns and they clean up Kili and take away the bloodied blankets. While they’re helping tidy up, Bofur begins singing “Blunt the knives” and then Fili and Kili join in, Fili stomping on the floor and Kili banging along with his fists. Sigrid picks up the words quick enough, giggling as they sing, and when the song changes Bofur offers her a dance, twirling her about the living room while she grins. Despite her mettle and her many burdens, her youth is still clear as she merrily spins around the room.

Fili looks to Kili and he’s beaming as he watches them, his youth mirroring hers. Though only five years older, Fili feels the burden of the oldest sibling and a cold dread fills him as he watches his brother. Whatever the outcome of this endeavor, this is the last of their youth and Kili is spending it laid up on the floor of the bargeman’s house far from home. 

He wonders, not for the first time, if this plan to retake the Mountain is not entirely about the good of their people. Though their time since Erebor was taken was not always easy, many of them now have homes in the mountains, properly underground. They are no longer starving as they once were. Cities and towns have been built. Fili wonders if the reason that the only people willing to join Thorin were either kin or in debt to him, as the Ri family is. Of all the sacrifices that they have made, Fili is not willing for his brother to be one of them over some long-reminisced gold hoard. 

Fili sings and stomps his feet while he washes the bloody quilt in a basin of water. _Let them dance,_ he thinks. He knows now it might well be their last if they continue on with Thorin as he is.


End file.
